STAYCATIONING Chinese consumers spent 905.76 billion yuan (US$140.16 billion) on a month-long online Spring Festival shopping spree that concluded Thursday, official data showed Friday.

The 30-day period of online shopping, which ran from Jan. 20 to Feb. 18, saw online catering sales skyrocket by 48.5 percent compared with the same period in 2020, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

Products and services related to Lunar New Year’s Eve dinner surged 78.8 percent from the Spring Festival holiday in 2020, while online sales of movie tickets spiked 412.7 percent on yearly basis to surpass 9 billion yuan, the data shows.

The daily average number of movie tickets sold via Alipay surged more than 560 percent compared with January, with people in big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai among the most avid moviegoers, data from the payment platform showed.

China’s box office revenue during the week-long Spring Festival holiday hit a record high of 7.8 billion yuan, beating the same holiday in the previous years.

Many Chinese people opted to stay put during the Spring Festival holiday this year in response to the government’s call for avoiding unnecessary gatherings as part of anti-epidemic measures.

During the holiday, online payments through card payment giant China UnionPay hit a record high of 1.38 trillion yuan, up 4.8 percent from last year’s holiday.

A new trend is that an increasing number of senior users joined the online spree. On the Lunar New Year eve, Chinese online payment clearinghouse NetsUnion processed 67,400 online payment transactions per second at the peak time.

Red packets sent by people aged 60 and above through Alipay surged 210 percent month on month during the holiday, while the red packets they received also soared some 430 percent.

The transaction value of local hotel bookings surged 190 percent year on year during the holiday, data from Alibaba’s online travel service provider showed.

Many chose to travel by public transportation or new energy cars. The search for charging stations surged 300 percent year on year, while that for metro and bus services skyrocketed 630 percent and 388 percent, respectively, Alipay data showed.

The services activity data for the Lunar New Year holiday pointed to resilience in the Chinese economy, Nomura said in the report, adding that the resilience means China’s GDP growth for the first quarter could be better than expected.(Xinhua)